Our most important task at the present moment is to build castles in the air. We need not fear, as Thoreau reminds us, that the work will be lost. If our eutopias spring out of the realities of our environment, it will be easy enough to place foundations under them. Without a common design, without a grand design, all our little bricks of reconstruction might just as well remain in the brickyard; for the disharmony between men’s minds betokens, in the end, the speedy dilapidation of whatever they may build. Our final word is a counsel of perfection. When that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect will pass away.
Bibliography
For the benefit of the reader who wishes to travel further along the trails opened up in this survey of utopias, I am giving a list of the principal books on the subject. This list includes all the important utopias that are accessible in English, as well as a few that are not; but it is not exhaustive, for the region of Utopia has its swamps and arid places as well as its fertile and cultivated land; and no one but a scholarly explorer need attempt to enter the more forbidding parts of the country.
Needless to say, in dealing with our historic utopias I had a rough criterion of selection. I set out to treat such plans for the improvement of the human community as had been embodied in complete pictures of an ideal commonwealth: this excluded important essays in politics like Hobbes’ Leviathan and Harrington’s Oceana; and it ruled out any treatment of abstract idealisms which, however important, did not exemplify the essential utopian method. Next, I resolved to deal at length only with those utopias which have exercised some influence on thought and life, particularly in the Western European world. Third, I sought to emphasize what was common in the methods and ends of the classic utopias; making plain their relations within the world of utopias and their relevance in the present day, rather than attempting to show in any detail the social milieu in which each utopian wrote. In dealing with the nineteenth century my criterion became a little shaky; and I frankly chose the nineteenth century utopias on the basis of their association with temporal movements like state socialism, the single tax, and syndicalism, rather than because of their conformity to standards which served to weed out irrelevant utopias in the earlier centuries. In devoting a little space to Fourier and Spence and giving short shrift to Owen I have tried to restore these interesting and significant figures to the place that they deserve. There will doubtless be disagreements over my selections and the amount of space I have allotted to various writers; but at least, where there has been madness there has also been method.
Certain parts of the argument are not covered by this list of utopias. The best introductions to utopian literature in general are in German; see R. Blucher’s excellent pamphlet on Moderne Utopien; Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus, Bonn: 1920. While Mr. Van Wyck Brooks put me independently on the trail of Rabelais Abbey of Thélème I must acknowledge, with as much grace as possible, that Herr Blueher anticipated me in grasping this clue to Renaissance culture; and if any credit is due, he deserves it. The most exhaustive catalogue of pre-nineteenth century utopias is contained in Kautsky’s Vorläufer des Modernen Sozialismus. Max Beer’s History of British Socialism has an excellent discussion of the relation of the utopians to socialism. See also Moritz Kaufmann’s Utopias; or Schemes of Social Improvement, from Sir Thomas More to Karl Marx, London: 1879.
The chapter on the Country House might well be prefaced by Mr. Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class, a satire which seems to me unique in scholarship and originality. The importance of our social myths and our collective representations has been noted by a whole school of French sociologists who follow Émile Durkheim; and the dynamic force of ideas has been treated by Alfred Fouillée. On both these topics there is a whole literature; and it would give a sense of false simplicity to single out any particular essay. There is a fairly popular discussion of the place of myths and ideals in the George Sorel’s Reflections on Violence, and Benjamin Kidd’s Science of Power (especially Chapter V.).
As a loose illustration of the general method and outlook embodied in this book I refer to the Making of the Future Series, edited by Messrs. Patrick Geddes and Victor Branford and published by Williams & Norgate, London. There is an able exposition of the regionalist movement and of the fundamental realities upon which this movement is based in two books published in that series; namely, Professor Fleure’s Human Geography in Western Europe and C. B. Fawcett’s The Provinces of England. Two works by the editors, The Coming Polity and Our Social Inheritance are likewise suggestive. Professor Geddes is the outstanding exponent of the Eutopian method both in thought and in practical activity; and the reader should consult his City Development (1904) and his Town-Planning Towards City Development: A Report to the Durbar of Indore, 2 vols. Indore, 1918. Both of these books are mines from which all sorts of precious thoughts can be quarried; and it is unfortunate that the first is out of print and the second almost unaccessible. Professor Geddes work exemplifies concretely a good part of what I have sought to explain and define in not altogether adequate prose.
